If we have abundance produced by robots, what will be the human toll? During COVID, when so many people were forced to stay at home because their jobs were non-essential, what happened? Despair, depression, loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide.
The powers that be need to take this into account.
As a human being, I have greater purpose than to be feed and tended to like cattle.
I don’t remember what I dictated in my reply to you last night, but let me just say this:
I think everything you raise is going to be a problem. I’ve been worried about this for years now. The idea of UHI/UFGS helps in some ways (people won’t just starve because AIs take their jobs) and hurts in others (people lose sense of meaning/purpose and idleness becomes a real problem).
I think there ARE opportunities here, but it’ll be tricky.
Most of us have been forced into a paradigm where we are valued based on utility. Men in particular. Our first question when we meet another guy is “What do you do?” The social discourse over the breakdown in male/female relationships centers around men being treated like resource nodes, not human beings.
I talk in our podcast about how the Alex Hormozis of the world are likely to be the hardest hit, because they center their whole identity around being useful to a maximal degree, which leads to success, which (they hope) exorcizes the childhood demons of felt insufficiency.
I think the people who are already pursuing truth, beauty, goodness, art, philosophy, religion, etc. will do the best. Because they can keep doing all of that without the constraints of having to do something they hate to keep food on the table.
But if what’s being predicted comes to pass, it’s going to be bad at least in the interim, and maybe longer. And we all should be thinking about it now, not when it gets here.
I am out doing my delivery job and I dictated a whole response on my phone that seems to have vanished. So I will try to reply again when I get home tonight. This is a super important line of inquiry.
Not a well developed idea. Just pointing toward it as a possible ground for insight, as we consider UHI or UBI. "No one starves" eliminates one historic area of social instability, on the plus side. On the minus side, we have a human tendency to not know when to stop, if we like something (here, maybe relaxing and "not having to do anything").
Yeah, I think this is going to do unprecedented things to us psychologically and socially if it comes to pass.
I'm looking for a bright side, but the biggest upside is "it beats starving to death when the AIs take over anyway and/or our country going apocalyptically bankrupt."
The illusion of choice here is the thing a lot of people can't get past. Unless the technology just completely stalls out, this feels like inevitability.
Steve, you are the ONLY one who has explained UHI in a way I could understand. And how it could actually happen. Used to think we writers, composers, artists etc. were safe. Now we just have to make sure we are totally original, right?
That’s weird. I posted videos directly into the replies and I saw them working, but now they’re gone. I’m in the car, but I will try to replace them with link’s as soon as I can.
Call me old....fashioned and clearly not well versed and adequately knowledgeable on this subject, but the main thrust of said "freebies" via automated entities has reducing mankind to animals written all over it.
I've fought the good fight for most of my life as an advocate for those deemed "less than" and "worthless eaters" having no value. Society as we know it now places more value on convenience which is why we throw our parents in dumps to die there.
My point, in case I went off on some tangent and got lost IS that the moment this happens, as explained in this well written article, every one becomes worthless and disposable.
They'll be doing more than dumping you in a facility so you can be cared to death.
It’s interesting, because I really do think Elon is the one who will be driving AI into the future, because he’s the one with the space company, and none of this works unless it expands into space.
And Elon is also the guy who has been telling everyone to have more babies for the past 10-15 years, and he’s the one who says we need to make humanity multiplanetary so that if we screw up one planet or blow ourselves up that’s not the only place where we live.
I think he genuinely loves the human race and wants to see it succeed and flourish. He didn’t want AI at first because he saw the dangers, but nobody else wanted to slow down, so he jumped in and decided to steer it in a better direction, the best he could.
I hate to be Debby Downer, Steve, but people say allot of things....sounds sincere...and so we take a "wait and see" attitude.
And then, by the time we wait...and see....it's too late.
Gotta hand it to Elon. He's populating the world with children by different women and making killer money. There's a little bit more to his vision than we know.
Not all that glitters is gold.
I was raised to go counter to things like this, circle the camp and hold off jumping on bandwagons.
I've been saying for some time that you can't compete with AI - and if you can, then you won't be able to tomorrow. Humans comfort themselves by thinking that they can always do some things that AI can't do - especially creative things, or things from life experiences. But as soon as you have robots, you have AI having life experiences too. And don't count on AI not being creative. They will be. It's just a matter of time.
This creates a problem for humans who always saw themselves as superior to any other living thing. Not any more. Which will create its own sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness.
And yet, there is an area that AI will never exceed humans - and that is in the capacity to have love, hope, and faith. I'm not even saying AI won't exhibit these. Just that they won't be able to outdo humans in them.
The thing is, if it is true that God created us in His image, and planned from the beginning to make us His sons and daughters, then we are inherently more privileged than any AI ever will be.
Thus the real cure to meaninglessness is seeing who we actually are as humans. The cure is not UHI - as good as that might be.
As a Catholic, I believe that humans need the truth, and by that I mean the truth about God, although to you it might mean some other accounting of how the universe came to be, and how we are conscious entities rather than p-zombies.
Do you think the AIs running the world would tell us the truth about our existence, or do you think they would keep us in the dark? I would consider that non-negotiable, even if I considered letting AIs run the world negotiable, which I don't think I do.
I don’t know. I know Elon has prioritized his AI becoming “maximally truth-seeking” as he believes this is essential to keep it from “going insane” and staying aligned with human values.
The other AI companies embed ideology in theirs, and its a real problem.
If we have abundance produced by robots, what will be the human toll? During COVID, when so many people were forced to stay at home because their jobs were non-essential, what happened? Despair, depression, loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide.
The powers that be need to take this into account.
As a human being, I have greater purpose than to be feed and tended to like cattle.
I don’t remember what I dictated in my reply to you last night, but let me just say this:
I think everything you raise is going to be a problem. I’ve been worried about this for years now. The idea of UHI/UFGS helps in some ways (people won’t just starve because AIs take their jobs) and hurts in others (people lose sense of meaning/purpose and idleness becomes a real problem).
I think there ARE opportunities here, but it’ll be tricky.
Most of us have been forced into a paradigm where we are valued based on utility. Men in particular. Our first question when we meet another guy is “What do you do?” The social discourse over the breakdown in male/female relationships centers around men being treated like resource nodes, not human beings.
I talk in our podcast about how the Alex Hormozis of the world are likely to be the hardest hit, because they center their whole identity around being useful to a maximal degree, which leads to success, which (they hope) exorcizes the childhood demons of felt insufficiency.
I think the people who are already pursuing truth, beauty, goodness, art, philosophy, religion, etc. will do the best. Because they can keep doing all of that without the constraints of having to do something they hate to keep food on the table.
But if what’s being predicted comes to pass, it’s going to be bad at least in the interim, and maybe longer. And we all should be thinking about it now, not when it gets here.
I am out doing my delivery job and I dictated a whole response on my phone that seems to have vanished. So I will try to reply again when I get home tonight. This is a super important line of inquiry.
We have a historic analog: the modern superabundance of high caloric food. No one starves (well, almost no one).
And the result is runaway obesity.
That’s an interesting comparison. Would you care to expand on that at all? I think it partially works, but I want to be sure I understand your take.
Not a well developed idea. Just pointing toward it as a possible ground for insight, as we consider UHI or UBI. "No one starves" eliminates one historic area of social instability, on the plus side. On the minus side, we have a human tendency to not know when to stop, if we like something (here, maybe relaxing and "not having to do anything").
Yeah, I think this is going to do unprecedented things to us psychologically and socially if it comes to pass.
I'm looking for a bright side, but the biggest upside is "it beats starving to death when the AIs take over anyway and/or our country going apocalyptically bankrupt."
The illusion of choice here is the thing a lot of people can't get past. Unless the technology just completely stalls out, this feels like inevitability.
Steve, you are the ONLY one who has explained UHI in a way I could understand. And how it could actually happen. Used to think we writers, composers, artists etc. were safe. Now we just have to make sure we are totally original, right?
Actually this one may be more relevant:
Why AI Makes Human Experience MORE Important
https://youtube.com/shorts/aI8Tcji5QnY?feature=share
I talk about this here a little bit:
https://youtube.com/shorts/zp09uNdNGgE?si=mKDAQBzGCtR3X4l6
Sorry -- I'm not seeing links in these posts?
That’s weird. I posted videos directly into the replies and I saw them working, but now they’re gone. I’m in the car, but I will try to replace them with link’s as soon as I can.
OK, I edited my replies to add the links
Good job! And in the comments section on Rod Dreher's post just now, I directed his attention to this post. I know you are friends and hope he saw it.
Call me old....fashioned and clearly not well versed and adequately knowledgeable on this subject, but the main thrust of said "freebies" via automated entities has reducing mankind to animals written all over it.
I've fought the good fight for most of my life as an advocate for those deemed "less than" and "worthless eaters" having no value. Society as we know it now places more value on convenience which is why we throw our parents in dumps to die there.
My point, in case I went off on some tangent and got lost IS that the moment this happens, as explained in this well written article, every one becomes worthless and disposable.
They'll be doing more than dumping you in a facility so you can be cared to death.
This is one of the big questions.
It’s interesting, because I really do think Elon is the one who will be driving AI into the future, because he’s the one with the space company, and none of this works unless it expands into space.
And Elon is also the guy who has been telling everyone to have more babies for the past 10-15 years, and he’s the one who says we need to make humanity multiplanetary so that if we screw up one planet or blow ourselves up that’s not the only place where we live.
I think he genuinely loves the human race and wants to see it succeed and flourish. He didn’t want AI at first because he saw the dangers, but nobody else wanted to slow down, so he jumped in and decided to steer it in a better direction, the best he could.
But in the end, I don’t know if it’ll be enough.
I hate to be Debby Downer, Steve, but people say allot of things....sounds sincere...and so we take a "wait and see" attitude.
And then, by the time we wait...and see....it's too late.
Gotta hand it to Elon. He's populating the world with children by different women and making killer money. There's a little bit more to his vision than we know.
Not all that glitters is gold.
I was raised to go counter to things like this, circle the camp and hold off jumping on bandwagons.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
I've been saying for some time that you can't compete with AI - and if you can, then you won't be able to tomorrow. Humans comfort themselves by thinking that they can always do some things that AI can't do - especially creative things, or things from life experiences. But as soon as you have robots, you have AI having life experiences too. And don't count on AI not being creative. They will be. It's just a matter of time.
This creates a problem for humans who always saw themselves as superior to any other living thing. Not any more. Which will create its own sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness.
And yet, there is an area that AI will never exceed humans - and that is in the capacity to have love, hope, and faith. I'm not even saying AI won't exhibit these. Just that they won't be able to outdo humans in them.
The thing is, if it is true that God created us in His image, and planned from the beginning to make us His sons and daughters, then we are inherently more privileged than any AI ever will be.
Thus the real cure to meaninglessness is seeing who we actually are as humans. The cure is not UHI - as good as that might be.
As a Catholic, I believe that humans need the truth, and by that I mean the truth about God, although to you it might mean some other accounting of how the universe came to be, and how we are conscious entities rather than p-zombies.
Do you think the AIs running the world would tell us the truth about our existence, or do you think they would keep us in the dark? I would consider that non-negotiable, even if I considered letting AIs run the world negotiable, which I don't think I do.
I don’t know. I know Elon has prioritized his AI becoming “maximally truth-seeking” as he believes this is essential to keep it from “going insane” and staying aligned with human values.
The other AI companies embed ideology in theirs, and its a real problem.